By Bev Harris and Jim Keller Human beings rely on one another for reality testing. Consensus is sometimes used to imply truth, but consensus is a dubious approach if a result is false. Election results can become false through error, outside “hacking,” or inside manipulation. The Texas legislature addressed election fraud as a concern when it passed laws to require…

Recounts provide a peaceful dispute mechanism to help ensure that elections will be free and fair and equal to all. But the mere act of having a recount is not what helps elections be free and fair. The recount must be accountable to the public and fully transparent. A recount doesn’t need a smoking gun, and never needs to be apologized for….

International election standards include, as part of free and fair elections, access to peaceful dispute mechanisms.1 Recounts check the accuracy of reported results. They do not require any specific anomalies, though questionable statistical results sometimes prompt candidates to request recounts. A different dispute resolution method, called a contest or an appeal, addresses anomalies with litigation. Lawsuits may address irregularities like…

A real-time demo of the most devastating election theft mechanism yet found, with context and explanation. Demonstration uses a real voting system and real vote databases and takes place in seconds across multiple jurisdictions. Over 5000 subcontractors and middlemen have the access to perform this for any or all clients. It can give contract signing authority to whoever the user…

Election audits are a subset of the larger area of public interest auditing. Audits can improve public integrity by introducing a third party evaluation as to whether conditions exist that would facilitate material misstatement by any government employee or governmental agent. Because government is owned by the public and paid for with taxpayer money, there is exists a public “right…

Most of the activities termed “audits” in elections are not audits at all, but are really spot checks. An actual audit differs in these important ways: – It is holistic, cross-checking information from a variety of source documents; – Discrepancies trigger nonrestricted expansion of the audit; – The entity being audited is not allowed to constrain the audit; – A…

Put the brakes on “mystery elections” once and for all. A simple 3-step method places public elections back under public control. THE BRAKEY METHOD Preserve and make public the “ballot images” — Modern voting systems take a picture of every ballot, called a “ballot image.” Peg the ballot image to the actual ballot using a unique ID number (not connected…

This is already available in most systems. Laws are already on the books to authorize you to do this. It costs almost nothing and enables almost everyone to authenticate computerized voting system results. All that remains is cooperation (or court-ordered coercion) of public officials to force them to honor your rights. It is a one-two punch which makes it very…

The Emmy-nominated HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy, has recently been made available for streaming on Amazon Video. Most people don’t realize that the producers of this film are independent filmmakers from Great Britain — they dug deep into their own pockets, and credit cards, to produce a film that was so controversial it was not at all certain whether it would…

About Black Box Voting!

Black Box Voting, founded in 2003, performs nonpartisan investigative reporting and public education for elections.

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You may be wondering what the term "black box" means. A "black box" system is non-transparent; its functions are hidden from the public. Elections, of course, should not be black box systems.

Influential reporting by Black Box Voting is referenced worldwide. Here is a link to a free copy of the book, Black Box Voting: HERE. Author Bev Harris became known for groundbreaking work on electronic voting machines, which can remove transparency of the vote count; other important reporting pertains to voter lists, election chain of custody, transparency problems with absentee voting, election industry corporate governance, and financial accountability in elections.

Opaque, non-transparent voting can afflict voter lists, poll lists,vote counting and chain of custody; political finance can also be "black box." The road to better transparency begins with knowledge and public, grassroots dedication. I am glad you are here!